


apple of my eye

by satellites (brella)



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Cheesy, College, Established Relationship, F/M, post-season one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-30
Updated: 2012-08-30
Packaged: 2017-11-13 04:29:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/499490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brella/pseuds/satellites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’m just saying that college seems really, super terrifying,” she concludes through a mouthful of French fries (sometimes she feels like she’s developed his ghastly eating habits in the two and a half years she’s had to witness them firsthand, and that thought is more nauseating than running straight at Count Vertigo).</p><p>His chewing slows, and he swallows his mouthful of cheeseburger before taking a swig of the mediocre root beer from the soda bar, his eyebrows furrowing. She frowns. Prompting seriousness from the clown to end all clowns hadn’t been on her agenda when she’d started rambling about going far away and not knowing anyone or anything and having a roommate and how sharing a communal shower with people besides the Team would be weird, all of which seemed more like the sort of things he’d be flipping out about, not her.</p><p>“Or, uh, maybe it doesn’t,” she adds hesitantly, flicking at a loose piece of lettuce on her red-and-white checkered burger wrapper.</p>
            </blockquote>





	apple of my eye

**Author's Note:**

  * For [empressearwig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/empressearwig/gifts).



> Written in totally discombobulated chunks for empressearwig a while ago. I've since revised and brushed it up a bit and now I think it's slightly more tolerable!

“D’you think it’d be giving too much away if I said that my special talents include saving the world and being awesome?”

“Yeah, along with being about as subtle as a brick to the face.”

A great and withering sigh emits from the speaker of Artemis’ cell phone, and she bites her lip to keep from snickering. The Gotham rain has been clattering on the fire escape outside for hours, and it feels like it’s just adding more urgency to the splayed out arrangement of official-looking papers on her floor, but Wally’s quips through the easy static of the speaker-phone are starting to make it a little easier.

“How far are you on yours?” he asks idly.

“I dunno, I kinda lost track right around the part where they asked me to write an essay about ‘a time I overcame adversity,’” she replies, deepening her voice in mocking on the last part.

“Uh, correct me if I’m wrong here, buuuut it seems like you’d have plenty to work with on that front.”

“I’m pretty sure that having you for a boyfriend for two years isn’t the kind of adversity they’re thinking of.” She can’t keep the wryness out of her voice, chewing the end of her pen pensively. “Probably more like, ‘Oh, yeah, one time I was in the Girl Scouts and I saved an old man from a raging bear.’ Something like that.”

“That’s not adversity; that’s just badass.” He sounds way too amused by the prospect of her being a Girl Scout. “Way to know your SAT vocab, genius. Hey, I asked Mom if I should put that time I got first place in my second grade science fair on the resumé. She just laughed, being a terrible cheerleader for Team Me and all. You think I should?”

“Every little bit counts, Wally.” She all-out laughs this time, leaning back and stretching. Her back is starting to twinge from hunching over the floor for so long. “I’m sure Stanford’s gonna be  _so_  impressed when you tell them you hold the record for tardiness at Keystone High. That’s, like, such a useful skill.”

“I’m gonna go far,” he insists dramatically, and she hears a thud and a muffled curse word. “Uh, once I clean that up. No, but seriously, isn’t it a bummer? If we could just tell people that the only reason they haven’t been fried by alien missiles is because of us, we’d be a shoe-in anywhere we wanted to go.”

“We can’t all be Tony Stark, dumbass.”

“You know, for someone who’s supposed to want to unconditionally jump my bones—and love me, and love me—” He adds hastily when she protests, “You really get a kick out of telling me I’m dumb.”

“Well, you are.” She groans a little when she rolls her shoulders back, relishing the movement and the popping.

He’s quiet for a minute, and she can hear some rustling, then: “Babe, if I look at all of this Arial anymore, I’m gonna go cross-eyed. Wanna grab some burgers?”

“I’ll be out front in five.” She doesn’t even bother trying to conceal her enthusiasm. “You know you’re the best, right?”

“That is so going in the essay,” he laughs, and she rolls her eyes as she hops to her feet to dig up some rainboots.

The future is great and all, but it’s terrible for her posture.

—

“I’m just saying that college seems really, super terrifying,” she concludes through a mouthful of French fries (sometimes she feels like she’s developed his ghastly eating habits in the two and a half years she’s had to witness them firsthand, and that thought is more nauseating than running straight at Count Vertigo).

His chewing slows, and he swallows his mouthful of cheeseburger before taking a swig of the mediocre root beer from the soda bar, his eyebrows furrowing. She frowns. Prompting seriousness from the clown to end all clowns hadn’t been on her agenda when she’d started rambling about going far away and not knowing anyone or anything and having a roommate and how sharing a communal shower with people besides the Team would be weird, all of which seemed more like the sort of things  _he’d_  be flipping out about, not her.

“Or, uh, maybe it doesn’t,” she adds hesitantly, flicking at a loose piece of lettuce on her red-and-white checkered burger wrapper.

“This  _is_  what you want, right?” he says suddenly, crossing his arms and resting them on the table, staring across it at her with an uncharacteristic amount of caution in his gaze.

“What?” She blinks, taken aback. “Yeah, of course. Why wouldn’t it be?”

He sighs, lowering his head.

“I dunno, ‘cause you might just be doing it for my benefit?” he suggests, and he winces as soon as he says it, like he’s afraid she’s going to deck him. (She’s tempted.)

“Don’t be stupid,” she exclaims incredulously. “Like going out of my way to do extra-nice things for you has  _ever_ been on my to-do list.”

He smiles, a little more softly than she’s used to, and the freckles move around it. “Yeah, duh. I’m just…”

He lets out another pensive sigh and leans back again, resting against the worn red leather of the booth. A traffic light changes outside and the green splatters over the water droplets on the window, the steam stains.

“I just know that, like, college isn’t really your style,” he says carefully. “In that it doesn’t involve beating the crap out of things every day and night. Not that I’m not a great punching bag, but I’m probably not gonna be enough after a while, once I’ve been hospitalized.” He’s staring at the corner of his napkin, running one hand through his damp hair. “I just – you don’t have to give it up for my sake, y’know?”

“I’m not  _giving it up_ ,” she hears herself say, sounding slightly more aggravated than she’d intended. “I mean, we’re still gonna go on missions when we’re needed, and… I’ll be patrolling with G.A. when I feel like I need to, and it’s not like I’m  _quitting_ —”

“You seriously think we can pull off getting decent grades at  _any_  college while we’re still in the gig?” He huffs. “I mean, maybe that’ll work out okay at first, when we can afford to shirk off, or whatever, but – Artemis, we’re gonna have to put it on hold sooner or later; don’t kid yourself.”

“We’ll deal with that when it comes,” she mutters, reaching her hand across the table and putting it on top of the one of his that isn’t currently making his hair stand on end. His knuckles shift under her palm, loosening. “Wally. Look at me.” He glances up at her with a guilty expression like a kid about to be reprimanded, and she holds his gaze, ducking her head when his eyes start to stray. “Wally. This is what I want. This and everything that comes with it. Even if you weren’t involved at  _all_ , it’d be what I want. So quit worrying and remember that I never do stuff I don’t want to?”

His mouth twitches and when he reaches for the last of the jumbo fries again, she knows she’s said the right thing. She draws her hand away with a smile and proceeds to finish off her vanilla milkshake, watching the rain pelt the glimmering black pavement outside. They lapse into comfortable quiet for a while, save for the sound of Wally’s unabashed chewing, and she thinks she hears some thunder somewhere (it sounds like college).

“It’s what I want, too,” he finally says inexplicably, like she didn’t already know how much he wants to go off to college – preferably the same one as her – and get A’s and poke around in science labs and run the track at Stanford and learn how to cook his own meals (impossible, heavy on the  _im_ ).

—

When she gets her acceptance letter to Stanford, she dials his home number with shaking fingers. Mary West picks up, but Artemis can hardly hear her over the sound of Wally’s loud whooping in the background, the pounding against the walls as he runs through the house cheering.

They’re both accepted to nearly all of the different colleges they applied for, but in the end, it’s  _Stanford_ , because when Batman insists on paying tuition for the both of them, it’s kind of hard to say no. Artemis wants a sweatshirt, or, rather, she wants Wally to get a sweatshirt so she can steal it when he's not looking and flaunt it.

Her mom cries and holds Artemis’ head between her hands and whispers the kindest and proudest words in the dimness of that tiny apartment, and pretty soon Artemis is crying, too, kneeling on the floor with her arms wrapped around her mother’s waist as the stupid power flickers in and out. Barry is so pleased that he and Wally run up north for a few days, and Rudy West seems inclined to get blatantly misty-eyed whenever Wally’s in the same room as he is, and Mary has never glowed so brightly.

The Team has a party for them that mostly involves squeals and hugs from M’gann and lots of beer quips and sex jokes from an incomparably immature Robin, along with cake and emotional embraces from Kaldur and inexplicable wailing from Captain Marvel. Zatanna is already all set to go shopping for “dorm swag” with Artemis at the next opportunity, and M’gann just cries about how much she’ll miss her Earth sister, and Artemis tries not to notice the oddly conflicted look on Robin’s face when he doesn’t think anyone’s paying attention.

Stanford, she repeats to herself, over and over and over, and it barely rusts in her head, barely fades. They’re going to  _Stanford_.

“So how’d you trick them into thinking you weren’t a major loser?” Artemis asks Wally jokingly as they sit side-by-side on a park bench in Central City, the smell of morning rain resting in the red leaves of the trees. A storm is approaching, and the whole park is empty and quiet.

“I tricked you, didn’t I?” he replies with a toothy grin that crinkles the edges of his eyes.

“Um, never.” She beams right back at him, and it’s all stupid and cheesy but it fits, and she’s never wanted something so much in her life, she realizes as she leans over and drops her head onto Wally’s shoulder.

“I want a dog,” she declares.

“Wow, way to plan uncomfortably far ahead,” Wally sniggers, resting the side of his head against hers. “Well, I want a big TV. And video games. And a really nice microwave. So there.”

“Whoa, dream big.”

“Hey, I have a lot of dreams, okay? If they were all as ginormous as going to college with my girlfriend, I’d be stuck in limbo forever, or something.” He grins. “That was an  _Inception_  joke. Laugh.”

“Yeah, thanks.” She’s heard him and Robin quote it at each other enough times to know every stupid nuance of the thing.

“Tell me I’m hilarious,” he says. “And awesome, and amazing, and witty—”

“You’re a dork,” she tells him, elbowing him lightly. He lets out an overblown “ _oof_.”

“That’s… not quite what I was going for,” he sighs, “but it’s the best I’ll ever get from you, so I’ll take it.”

“I’m kidding.” She closes her eyes. “You’re great.”

“Yes, yes,  _do_  go on.”

“Don’t push it.”

“Are you happy?” he asks carefully, tilting his head back to stare at the sky. “Because I’m happy. I’m really, really happy. On the happiness scale, I’m kind of a DEFCON 2.”

She scoffs and folds her arms, holding back a shiver.

“Yeah, I am.” It’s the truth. “I’m happy, too.”

“We are so awesome.” He slings his arm around her shoulders. “Hey, Artemis. You know I’m really proud of you, right?”

She lets it sink in, lets the words soak her very bones, before putting one hand on the side of his face and kissing him, sliding her fingers behind his ear. He sighs contentedly and, after a time, she eases away, resting her forehead against his. He’s still beaming at her, giddy and enthused, and maybe his humming skin is starting to spread to hers, too, because she feels like every inch of her is buzzing even in the cold, even in the scattering rain that’s quickly escalating into a downpour.

“I’m proud of you, too,” she says with more tenderness than she’d planned on, and she quickly adds, “Geek.”

He sighs and clutches his chest in mock agony, buckling forward. “You had me so hopeful for a second there.”

“Quit continuing to be a geek and get me out of this rain, please,” she demands fondly, putting her arms indicatively around his neck, and he ducks his head politely before sweeping her up and, relishing the emptiness of the park, rocketing off across the mud and grass. The wind tears and howls at her ears and it’s the most cathartic sound she’s ever heard, like it’s pulling out all the doubts and wonderings to make room for the plans.

The crook of Wally’s neck smells like woodsmoke, somehow. Maybe Mary had told him to build a fire, or he and Barry and Rudy had barbecued. She almost falls asleep like that, to the sound of the rain and the beat of his chest as he laughs and the steady marcato of his feet on the ground, milliseconds away from soaring.


End file.
